Cambridge Craftsman, LLC

Cambridge Craftsman is a Cambridge, MA carpentry shop built around one thing: restoring the porches, sheds, and architectural woodwork on the area's older homes. Owner Kevin Richard runs it as an owner-operated crew, and the company describes itself as specializing in historic restoration using sustainable materials. Its Massachusetts Home Improvement Contractor license is active. The pattern in its reviews is consistent. Since March, homeowners have described a 3-story Victorian rear porch rebuilt with mahogany decking, a wraparound porch restoration that involved structural rot repair, a custom portico paired with 48 replaced window and door casings and new cedar siding, an Arts and Crafts trellis and arbor, and a garbage shed, bike shed, and built-in bookcases. Five reviews posted in that window are five stars with no complaints about the workmanship itself, and reviewers keep returning to the same two points: the porch work looks true to the home's original architecture, and the crew held to the agreed budget and timeline on at least one large rebuild. That reputation shows up beyond Google, too. Nextdoor neighbors recommend the crew for carpentry, construction, and deck renovation, and it carries a matching 5.0 rating on Birdeye's Cambridge construction directory. Local press once profiled the shop for its handmade sheds and porches, describing work that "looks as much like art as it does form and function." The one thing worth asking about before booking: a homeowner who had their wraparound porch restored said the final cost came in higher than originally quoted, even though they liked the result enough to say they'd hire the company again. And the numbers behind the praise are still small — Google shows 5.0 stars from 7 ratings, and the written reviews across sources add up to around 6 or 7 — so the track record, while spotless so far, isn't deep yet. Cambridge Craftsman is the right call for a period-detail porch, a custom outdoor structure, or exterior carpentry on an older home, not a general remodeling job. Get a firm, written cost estimate up front given the one report of a project running over budget, and expect a specialist's price for the kind of hand-built, architecturally matched work its reviews describe.